Chinese view of greatest threats

The Lowy Institute, in Sydney, today released a poll of Chinese attitudes about their own country, its prospects, its relations with the outside world, and so on. Like statistics on almost anything coming out of China, opinion-survey results from there should be considered approximations of reality at best. (For instance, it is just about impossible to get reliable results from the poor, rural majority of China's population. Therefore polls unavoidably make the responding public seem more educated, urbanized, richer, etc than the whole Chinese public is.) But taken at face value many of these findings are interesting. For instance, on the major threats to China's well-being:

Click for a more detailed version, but the first two on the list are environmental, and the third involves Japan. Number four is possible American attempts to hold China back. Or, on one of my favorite hobby-horses, the importance of attracting Chinese (and other) students to the U.S. for education:

The whole report is available in PDF from the Lowy home page, here; ongoing discussion on the Lowy "Interpreter" site, e.g. here.

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James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.